animation use SDF baking for what you say in their cases. all they showed are related to the physic engine. Backing is part of their project since they start speaking about the engine.
No, that is not entirely true, SDF baking were totally not a part of their project since they started speaking about the engine. The first major patreon post about it is "Animation/Interactions Progress! (Patreon) 2021-10-25" In that post they are describing that deafault unity engine is just does not look good/do the job for them and go in detail about the engine they came up with, there where no mentions of SDF whatsoever, so the case for the latter patreon updates,
SDF came into picture somwhere around here
Next Gen Collision System - Animation Progress Part 4 (Patreon) (2022-04-14) which states from the first paragraph:
"Hi all!
We're proud to present our new automatic collision system for FurryVNE that will go along with the new interaction systems coming later this year."
And then they proceeded to explain what SDF actually is, which is specifically in their case about collision, not animaton or soft bodies itself, you can look it up on either KP or their patreon.
But the most important part is
The SDF baking is the newest addition to their engine. And yes The parts of features like soft body belly and tits deforming when being pressed against a collider like a wall and also each other, and dynamic parts use the SDF baking, again exclusively when it comes to collision like the tails colliding with the body instead of clipping trough it, but they already had the tech to prevent that, it was described in one of the update posts and it required you the player set the colliders on body yourself, but the idea was scrapped the moment they decided trying implementing SDF baking(cuz its was better they told). So those systems are not solely dependent on the SDF baking, since they have their own functions, that already worked, the soft bodies where soft'n'jiggly and dynamic parts were affected by physics before the SDF.
actually the breast are emulated by slider, they have no physic properly speaking. ofc they can make ears work that way, but they did'nt intend too, for some reasons, i can only theorize like : all characters have breasts but not all character have ears, and, ears are places differently depending on the character.
you can still add slider to emulate that on your parts and cloth with shapekey. but it's not intended to replace the physic.
I don't quite understand what "emulated by slider" means, like a firmness slider in game or simulation of bra physics on breasts ? The first just determines how heavy and jiggly the breast should be and latter deforms the breasts in order to simulate them beind inside a bra, because clothing mechanic does not do that by itself. But breast themselves definitely do have physics, they jiggle when the character is moved in pose mode, they deform when you press them against the ground, and they are affected by gravity when you put the character upside down or pose it lying on their back. It's all procedural, not prerendered by hand. But i can agree that those physics are not the physics of their engine, it's a placeholder, a default unity physics engine probably.
As for why only breasts have physics and not other parts, my theory is wiggle/jiggle/dynamic bones. On their models only the breasts have them. The ears/tails/etc that you import or have in the game are just meshes with just the root bone, that's why they are static, and i don't have much knowledge on modeling and animation, but i believe that dynamic bones are only a thing because of like a blender plugin that adds them, or they are coded in the software itself, so that's why you can't import models with them in FVNE, they just won't work outside of where they where added.
And as for clothes i have no idea how that works, i don't believe they ever specified how the jiggles on clothing works in their game, but just shape key shouldn't be enough to simulate physics procedurally. As the shape key just deforms the mesh in a predefined way. Like The belly inflation slider or breast size slider are shape keys, they can't simulate physics.
also you can't add a feature if all related features are not ready.
this be like having an arm but no brain to operate it or no shoulder to use it.
If it is a feature of a one singular system where they all can only work if they are all present then yes, i suppose you can't and shouldn't.
But those features are not that, they each do separately their own thing, and only intersect somewhat.(like soft body intersect with SDF when it needs to collide with other character so it can properly deform when being squised against it) With the exception of like core stuff for the engine, but since they already implementing soft body, SDF and other things, that part is defiantly ready and working, otherwise they could not show us anything.(but i'm not sure, i don't really know how physics engines structured or work)
Well i dunno they defiantly did that with CCtool, it did not have all the features like custom offsets and clothing, character cloud. They added those later, why can't they add things one by one this time ?
i've not enought knowledge to anwser you properly, you can still ask your question on the discord, you will certainly have more proper anwsers than mine.
It's okay, i came here just to discuss a game, would be nice but i don't expect all the answers just handled to me, only FVNE devs truly know all these things since it's their game.
And i higly doubt i will get any proper answers from their discord, ppl there will probaly take it as an attack on devs and will get overly defensive, and devs would just ignore the uncomfortable questions, or pull "it's my project i do it how i want card".
That's just how it goes with these discord servers, or official forums and such.
And my personal opinion, i believe that devs just went over the top with their ambitions, and prioritized looks rather than functionality, and start doing things that is not priority for majority of people who liked this game. This game is bassicaly YL1 but better, at least that's how it started. People wanted a CC tool, and more flexible non restrictive interactions to make cool sex scenes. But who really asked for 100% believable realistic physics, or in-depth collision system, penetration dynamics were good as they were even in YL1. All the updates on animation is really not that much about animation, it's all about their complicated physics engine, that i personally believe is not necessary at this stage. Ability to make sex scenes with simpler physics engine>just waiting for years and huff copium hoping that it's gonna come out soon and no new problems arrive.
Can't they do all that stuff later, and just give ppl what they truly want ? I belive if they just dropped the SDF, and go for simpler physics in general we would already have interactions months ago.
As some dude from this thread said it best:
fuck these engine crap nerd thing
i want seggs with a dragon